


Songbird Battle Network

by Valentine20xx



Series: Rockman EXE: Songbird Battle Network [2]
Category: Mighty No. 9 (Video Game), Rockman.EXE | Mega Man Battle Network
Genre: F/M, Mayl as a Navi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2020-09-02 08:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentine20xx/pseuds/Valentine20xx
Summary: It's been years since the time of Sonnet, of the original network, and she is gone, deleted in a transfer gone wrong. But, when an investigation into the history of a phantom Navi turns up that Mayl is mortally sick, could the truth about that time save her? And what really happened to Sonnet?





	1. The Lie About Mayl Sakurai

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Rockman Battle Network, Megaman NT Warrior and all related trademarks © Capcom. Call © Comcept/Intl Creates. Elements like the Songbirds and all other unique characters to this fanfiction universe are not covered by this copyright.
> 
> Keep your ear open for certain habits over one particular name. You'll catch something very early if you spot it. A good clue is that one country has different ways of saying the same thing sometimes to others. Also, This story was written without the knowledge of the way the actual franchise's Cache and Phantom Navis, but I actually hit upon the basics of their origins pretty well, and Cache may well appear.

Mayl groaned as she got up, her watch beeping in annoyance. She didn't want to be seen like this, she never had, but she hadn't been truly healthy for as long as she could remember. Most people loved their birthday. Mayl had successfully managed to move her birthday celebration to a day a few weeks later, since she was usually in bed on her real birthday, suffering terrible pain, unable to stand upright for very long, and so far she'd managed to look like she was perfectly fine on her fake birthday.  
She looked towards her watch, taking out a small repurposed candy dispenser, shaking out some of the pills inside, feeling herself recover as the beeping stopped. She couldn't understand herself what was wrong with her, the medical applet that handled the prescriptions and gave Roll the updated time scale for her doses was the only one who had even a clue.  
When she was a baby, the doses were sparse and she could go an entire week without taking any drugs. Nowadays, she couldn't go a full day without symptoms. She sighed. Whatever her illness was, she didn't expect to be able to function without constant medication until graduation day, and might even end up dead before then from it.  
She'd done well enough hiding the fact she was a latchkey child, her parents contacted through a phone call every few days, but anyone she felt needed to know, like Miss Mari and the other teachers at school, but none of her friends needed to know. She hoped that she'd not end up with a walking stick, her body in spasms.  
She glanced at her watch, and sighed. It was a rudimentary PET, not able to do anything but display a Navi's face and load chips. The medi-Navi was loaded onto the PET, and discreetly made it vibrate whenever the biorhythm program loaded into the slot detected an issue, and beeped if it was an issue that needed her immediate attention.  
She rubbed the spot where the PET was plugged into her arm, allowing it to detect anything that was untoward. Thankfully, the cable never shifted, or it would become yet another infection risk. She picked up Roll's PET, heading out of the door. She didn't really think about the real reason she had a PET plugged into her arm. Partially since Roll always wore thick gloves...

**Network Location: netopia@w3.dentech.co.jp**  
**Far Above Netopia City**  
Bass was having… yet another existential crisis. After his latest brush with decompilation, He'd been restored again.  
"Who the hell keeps restoring me after Rockman deletes me?" He wondered. He was beginning to have problems with figuring out what parts of his data were him, never mind original code, since he'd been pulled together using the fragments of various programs so often, he wondered sometimes how the hell they fit together in the right way.  
Hell, Grave, the viral beast made out of the bug fragments culled from what someone swore was part of his code, was long deleted, the data no longer capable of being used even for error handling, it was that shattered. Yet somehow, enough data that matched his CRC values, along with enough original code to store his core program, came together and allowed him another few days of living.  
Hell, He sometimes wondered how someone got his data to hash right.  
"Why does someone seem to earn some kind of sick pleasure out of the act of restoring me?" He wondered, "Only Navis with a PET are worthy of such breaks..."  
He sighed, turning to make his way back into the Undernet. He wasn't a Navi, he was the most complex virus in known history, requiring a Giga Chip just to store a 'clean' backup of his data, well, data that hashed as him, he didn't want to ask what it actually was. He didn't have a clue what some of the data was that made up his program...  
"Well, Maybe you were a Navi, once, but forgot about it..." A voice stated, Bass blinking as he noticed a black suited femme, with silver streaks in her armor, had somehow sneaked up to him. What made that frankly ridiculous was that he was perched atop one of the highest points in the city, the renderer for the skybox not even able to properly reach that high, and he'd definitely not seen or heard them climb up.  
Admittedly, it wasn't possible outside of exploiting several glitches in the code up there, which, due to his nature, he easily could. But someone had got up here without making a sound.  
"Who are you..." Bass began snarling, before adding, "And Kernel-dammit, How in the Darknet did you get up here?"  
"The name's Riff..." She offered, "And maybe I was already up here..."  
"Good try, but I swept this place for... other viruses, and anything else with an AI subroutine, and do so every time I come up..." Bass growled, "Try again..."  
"OK, It's what I do, but that's all I'm at liberty to say… Anyway, I decided, because I needed something to do, to watched an outdated piece of mercenary viral code bemoan his REALLY solitary existence…" Riff offered, "It's kinda fun, in a lethally voyeuristic sort of way..."  
"Incredibly..." He deadpanned, glaring at her, before he snarled, "I am not 'outdated'! I am eternal! I am Bass, latest in the lineage of the immortal one, Bass, the greatest..."  
The rant stopped as he noticed that Riff had taken off her helmet, to show black hair with silver streaks, similar to her frame, his glare turning frosty as Riff cleaned her helmet off with her sleeve, the act completely pointless except to show she didn't even care what he was saying.  
"Sorry, Continue. I was recording that in case I needed something for next comedy night..." Riff offered, "I know all about the mythical Bass, supposedly the greatest creation of a parallel universe's Doktor Albert Wily, who was not recorded to have ever offlined, which his successor recreated in you… But..."  
She paused, slumping.  
"You're not Bass… You might act like him, you might even look close to him..." She continued, looking him in the eye, "But you're not him. You're a tribute, at best, but you're still a fake, and even worse… You probably don't even know who you really are… For one… The real one isn't called Bass..."  
She then stunned Bass as she took a running jump off the side of the roof, Bass not having time to react, except to mentally count down the refresh cycles before the bedlam. After a short time, he looked down, frowning at the fact he couldn't see any trace of the Navi, or a growing crowd at the sudden suicidal dive a Navi took into the street below.  
"What did she mean by me being a 'fake'?" Bass mused, "What am I really then? And what did she mean by that 'the real one isn't called Bass'?!"

_Dentech City School_  
_A few days later_  
"Want to share your candy with me?" Lan asked as he noticed Mayl tip a couple of pieces of her omnipresent candy back before class started. Mayl looked thoughtful for a moment, before shaking her head.  
"They're medicated candies," She admitted, "Not something you just hand out... I used to just take them when I was not in class, but..."  
Mari looked up as she noticed the commotion. "The school is aware she has them, her parents require that the reason is not made part of classroom gossip..." Mari stated, Lan and Mayl sitting down.  
Mari then turned to the board, pausing as she looked at the subject. "What's wrong, sensei?" Mayl asked, confused as to what the subject is.  
"Today's class material is on Phantom Navis..." Mari stated, and Mayl simply stopped unpacking her things and prepared to leave, Mari explaining by stating, "Mayl has certain subjects of network history that she's been excluded from due to issues she has with the subject,"  
"Scared of ghost stories?" Yai teased.  
"Glide, Please keep your user on a short leash..." Mayl replied with a low growl, "You're lucky. The Ayanokouji Network is a sixer..."  
She then was out of the door and heading towards the library.  
"Sixer?" Yai asked once they were all connected.  
"A rather archaic term, I suspect, in this case for a fairly new network node on the internet. The Undernet is situated beneath the nodes that have a digit count of 3 or less..." Mega Man stated, "What she likely meant is the fact you've likely never had a phantom navi anywhere near you..."  
"Archaic but still relevant..." Mari's Navi stated, "The old infrastructure that is still present in some of the oldest parts of the network are part of what causes a 'phantom' Navi, as data attempts to reform into what it once was after the original program has long departed from that area."  
"Mayl hates cache servers, me too… If you were to go into a cache server, it would seem like a zombie apocalypse, mindless copies of you and the people you know," Roll stated, as she logged into the classroom, "Before you ask, she's asleep in a small cot at the back of the library, I'm just here to cover for her over the subject..."  
"These cached copies are what can turn into Phantom Navis if they don't end up in the cache for whatever reason, or are otherwise loaded when they're not meant to..." Mari continued, "The most famous example of a Phantom Navi is Sonnet,"  
Roll rubbed her arm, looking very agitated.  
"I had been on double-digits for most of my life until I got upgraded..." Roll muttered, "I could say that I'm one of the few experts on Sonnet there is… Sonnet was a program from what was known at the time as Node 93, and is considered the first casualty of… Bass."  
There was some tapping as Mari checked something, before the teaching Navi responded.  
"I had to check some of it, and she is actually right..." Mari stated, as a map of the network showing IP addresses, which were simplified down after a tap to numbers, as a log appeared, showing 'Sonnet: Depart 93, Transmit 105, Receive 105. Carrier Signal Failure.', "All terminals connected to Node 105 had their internet connection crash simultaneously shortly after all contact with it failed."  
"I was being repurposed as a medical oversight program that day..." Roll stated, "Dencity Medical used Node 105 as a bridge for their internal network… But that's not relevant..."  
A blond-haired navi appeared, only to glitch out as a figure stepped through it, that looked similar to the figure, except with a helmet that completely covered their hair, motioning for Mari to step aside.  
"Ahem. Whoever made that cache render," The ghost stated, "I was never blond,"  
"Umm… Well, This is different..." Mari stated, "Normally we don't have the class subject actually visit..."  
"Was in the area..." Sonnet stated, "Anyway, What caused, well, the Phantom Navi was that I was delivering Roll's lunch for her shift at Dencity Medical... My code got thrown out of the transfer node in pieces,"  
Roll looked sheepish, the rest of the class surprised at the mundane reason behind one of the most famous ghosts of the network's existence.  
"So, you're a cache copy of Sonnet?" Glide asked.  
"Actually, In this case, I'm not strictly a Phantom Navi, since I'm the half of her that actually retains full functionality..." Sonnet replied with a wince, "I don't know what 'killed' me, but still, a good half of me is held in that crashed node, the manifestations that are usually, well, me being caused by people trying to boot up the node incorrectly..."  
"So, you aren't just the phantom, you _ARE_ Sonnet?!" Roll declared, Sonnet nodding, "Where have you been? What happened to-"  
"I am closer than you think..." Sonnet began, for there to be a chirping sound, Sonnet's hand moving to her wrist, and she gave an annoyed look, before vanishing. Roll pulled her glove aside to show a second icon on her wrist at the same location Sonnet had looked at.  
"Umm… OK, Still, That was, erm, Sonnet explaining one of the ways in which a Phantom Navi can end up happening, being a hung transfer request trying to activate, and sending ghost copies of the Navi..." Mari stated, "Roll, Maybe one day you can do a class on older revisions of Navis, and why they have an icon on their wrist..."  
"I can do the primer version now. It's called my Protocol, and it's effectively a Navi's equivalent of the Mark 1 PET. They look almost identical," Roll stated, tapping it, for the icon to chirp, and a bracer of some kind to appear on her arm, "Oh, right, must have had it on silent. I missed a message telling me Mayl's awake… I'll let her know about the class..."  
The bracer collapsed back down, Gutsman pulling aside his glove to show the edge of his collapsed Protocol, Roll one of the rare few other than him who had one.  
"I guess the Protocol system was not installed in modern Navis..." Lan assumed, "So, Sonnet is so old, she still uses one... And the fact that her Protocol was still working shows that was the real deal,"  
"I wouldn't say she's old…" Roll stated, "She's about the same age as everyone in the room, in human years anyway… She was just born a short time before the change from the Navi having their Protocol installed at birth to protocols being part of the terminal, Her build date was in the late 1980's, but that means nothing. I got compiled at this age,"

That evening, Roll had a lot to tell her friend.  
"Shame I slept through it..." Mayl stated as she listened to Roll's recollection of the lesson a few hours later, "So, your old friend was delivering your lunch?"  
"At least I got closure on why she went out onto that node that day..." Roll sighed, "The ghosts are just phantom copies firing to random places..."  
"I'm your best friend now, Roll..." Mayl offered, "If you'd not been on shift that day..."  
"You'd have survived..." Roll offered, "Yes, the virii were bad, but..."  
Mayl left the conversation hanging, heading to take the latest phone call from her parents, before she headed for an early night.

A few days later, Yai called the others together for a meeting.  
"So, What do we really know about Mayl?" Yai asked, the absence of Mayl obvious.  
"What do you mean?" Lan asked.  
"I did a bit of digging. Was looking for Mayl's medical records. Can't find them. Her name and date of birth don't match anything on the records..." Yai stated, "Something's not right..."  
"Hey, How about checking out who was in the hospital when Roll was doing her shift?" Dex offered, "Look into what was going on during Sonnet's death..."  
"Much more interesting..." Yai stated, "Logs are corrupted all to hell on that date… Sakurai?"  
"What's up?" Lan asked.  
"A name I got out of the logs. Mayl's last name." Yai stated, tapping something out, "She's been giving us the wrong date of birth! Here it… Fuck."  
"What?" Everyone else asked.  
"Mayl's badly sick. She has been since before we even met her, the drugs are mostly suppressants, keeping her at least _looking_ healthy," Yai replied, sighing, "That's why she's so secretive about it. She was born with a then-unknown degenerative disease,"  
"Add to that the fact she gets seizures over reminders about the date of her birth, and keeps a walking stick in the bottom of her bag, has not been permitted to do gym for the past year..." Roll listed as she appeared, "Yeah, She hides her date of birth since, let's just say she doesn't take the day off school accidentally..."  
Mayl then arrived herself, using the walking stick, clearly wincing, collapsing on a nearby bench.  
"So, now you know. Hospital was being attacked by viruses, I was a difficult birth, was on life support, and the entire paediatric department's computer system goes offline..." Mayl stated, "Add to it the fact my parents spend most of their time abroad, and you wonder why my life is one big case of _Don't Ask, Don't Tell_..."  
"And probing into Sonnet will invariably lead to probing about you..." Yai guessed.  
"Lan, we'd likely have made a good couple, but… I won't be able to interact with anyone for much longer..." Mayl stated, as her wrist chirped and she took some of her pills, "I expected Yai would look into why I avoided that class. So I had Roll watching you… Let's just say not just Roll's been hiding stuff..."  
Mayl then unplugged a wire from her watch, popping out the chip and handing both to Lan, the chip being a medical diagnostic program, the watch being a Mark 1 PET.  
"An ancient low-baud PET..." Yai muttered, pressing some buttons, "Hey, Mayl, where did you get this from?"  
"H… Had it since I was born..." Mayl stated, "Keeps track of my medical status..."  
She set it back up, hiding it again with her sleeve, before heading off back to her house. Once she was out of sight, Yai looked at Lan.  
"That PET. If I remember my devices right, It has very small local storage, usually used external modules since there wasn't even enough space for a proper Navi with anything side-loaded," Yai stated, "Did you notice how she unplugged it from her arm?"  
"It's a medical observation device, with a subdermal sensor package… The only thing on the PET is the medical Navi," Megaman offered, "Usual setup with those types of chip… Nothing more, nothing less. Mark 1 PETs are cheap as hell, and the same sensors that check for medication timings can also expand the storage,"  
"Gutsman think it's something more than that..." Gutsman offered.  
"What is it?" Dex asked.  
"Her Mark 1 PET. The tone, when she took some of her medication... I heard it before..." Gutsman stated, "Very recently..."  
"Tell you what. Someone see if you can plug into Mayl, check the medical programs she's running..." Yai offered, "If it's stock, nothing to worry about. If it's not..."  
"We'll know what's going on," Lan agreed. Something still didn't add up. For all he knew, the pills were a slow-acting poison...


	2. The New Songbird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm surprised I didn’t get any reviewers, but yes, anyone who looks at the first chapter and notices a comment Roll dropped, namely that a Navi Protocol, in it’s collapsed form, is visibly and functionally identical to a Mark 1 PET, well…
> 
> I’m not going to say anything yet.
> 
> Also, during the chapter, there will be a snippet of a very familiar, to some people, song.

Mayl sighed as she arrived at the back door for her home, twisting the bezel on her watch, before slotting it into an identical slot on the door, a short melody playing before the door opened. She knew that a regular key was less dangerous, but that was literally unique to her. No-one else could get into her house without effectively scanning their PET’s firmware.

She didn’t want to mention it to Lan, but she’d stopped living at her old home several months ago. Her new house was intended to be a music studio, where her and Roll could compose songs, part of a half-forgotten promise, but it wasn’t even half-finished, some rooms still needing properly wiring up, with several lacking even limited connectivity. As she felt the side-effects of removing the bezel, a band of light appeared, expanding outwards before Roll appeared completely, catching her as she almost dropped the bezel, slotting it back in.

Roll disabled her combat frame, changing instantly into a hooded jacket and jeans ensemble, collapsing on the couch with a sigh. Anyone who was able to come in through the, admittedly perpetually locked, front door would not be able to tell that Roll wasn’t human, one of the things that was possible with the protocol they used.

“I hope we can at least finish getting the Songbird Protocol working in the other rooms...” Mayl sighed, “Then I just file the application change notice, and this is your place for as long as you need it...”

“Thanks, Mayl,” Roll stated, “Most people would just let their Navi be decompiled or reassigned...”

“You’ve been there for me for as long as I can remember...” Mayl replied, “Want to keep the name Roll when you become a singing applet?”

“Personally, With how much I use this protocol, I’ll see if I can become a user, pretend to be your sister...” Roll offered, wincing as the nursing program appeared. She couldn’t stand Herr Doktor.

“Ms. Sakurai, You should consider not using a RFID key function,” She fussed, “Disconnecting your life support is not sensible...”

She then looked towards Roll. “And you’re not helping, acting like a user!” She snapped, motioning to Roll’s outfit, “Have some dignity...”

“Like you allow Mayl?” Roll snapped, “Don’t unplug your bezel, take your medicine, ‘Your continued health is more important than a social life!’...”

“I only act in ways that help Mayl continue to live, even with how terminal her disease is,” Doktor snapped, “And even I know what you’re really doing here! I scanned the file as well!”

“I had the idea first, Doctor!” Mayl pleaded, “And she does have a good point. But, I, myself, recreated this just for her! I’m her user, and she wants this! She’s not just some diagnostics applet, She’s my friend!”

Mayl then stormed off and collapsed on her bed, sobbing. Roll glared at Herr Doktor, snapping, “I hope you’re happy. I wasn’t the one who began recreating Songbird in the real world, or published the protocols...”

“No, You weren’t...” The medical navi offered, disappearing.

“Herr Doktor, what do you have to report?” A voice stated as she reappeared in a different place entirely.

“Degradation is accelerating...” She declared, “We were lucky to notice her, even with the corruption on the data,”

“And no-one knows the link between her and...” The voice asked.

“They barely know her parents don’t really exist...” Doktor replied, before giving an evil laugh.

The following day, Herr Doktor was standing with Mayl when they were in the school network, Roll having transferred off her PET for this lesson.

“OK, Yesterday, I promised to tell you about the time before the PET...” Roll stated, “Excuse me while I load up an archive I have on my system...”

The class suddenly found themselves in what resembled a music studio, Roll’s appearance shifting into the same jacket and jeans as she’d used the previous evening. Mayl looked round, before sitting at one of the keyboards, while the nurse took the bucket seat nearby, everyone else just picking a random seat.

“Anyway, This is my original program,” Roll stated, “At that time, I was a diagnostic applet...”

“In a music studio?” Lan offered, “And what’s with the new look?”

“Gutsman like...” Gutsman offered, his own bulk having slimmed down suddenly when he appeared.

“The protocols here don’t support my combat frame...” Roll explained, “Logout for a moment, and you’ll understand...”

Outside, in the classroom, they noticed the blackboard was running an old music authoring program, called Songbird. She wasn’t a diagnostic applet in a music studio, she was one in a music_ program_, that happened to look like one in digital space. Mayl reached over, checking through the folders, tapping out a password on one of them, before she started a song inside one of the folders revealed, which stopped almost as quickly.

“Ahem. That folder’s private, Mayl,” Roll stated, “How you knew the password, I don’t want to know… Thankfully, No-one other than Mayl noticed that directory before now, or I’d have ended up reported to the CPU… That folder was used by most of the applets running on the system for stuffing things they were doing in their free time,”

“Install Your...” Lan stated, as he noticed a file descriptor in the folder, “Roll, What are you doing with Aki songs on here?”

“That’s… Melody’s folder?” Roll muttered, “Sorry, That was the application that originally ran the program-level side of Songbird, before me and Mayl took it over, and no-one’s touched it before now...”

“Downloading the file… It’s definitely Aki, rougher than most versions, but I recognise the song. Some lyrics are different as well...” Mega Man stated, “Whoever this Melody is, they’ve got beta tracks for Aki...”

“...Log back in… please...” Roll stated, her voice strained, as she realised where another of her old, dear friends had gone.

“Still, In this time, we had Protocols, which were the forerunner to the PET, in that the earliest Personal Terminals were effectively reverse engineered off the Protocol’s specifications. Don’t know how they got the specifications, don’t need to know...” She continued. There was then a beeping sound, and Roll’s eyes narrowed, Mayl throwing her a microphone, holding one herself as she briefly went for her wrist, before putting the microphone back into it’s holder. As she did, Roll twisted the middle of her protocol, detaching it before slamming the bezel into the butt end of the microphone she was holding.

“Performing Live!” The microphone suddenly declared, Roll holding it to her mouth as she declared, “_Wind, Let Them Know,_ _Roll!_”

Roll’s appearance shifted into what they knew as Roll, except missing her helmet and still with her alternate frame’s hairstyle, her Roll Arrow drawn and fired in moments, deleting the Mets that had slipped into the simulation.

“What the hell was that?!” Lan asked, as Roll detached her Protocol from the microphone, tossing the latter to Mayl as she restored her original frame design.

“Part of the reason I keep this old place around...” Roll stated, before they all logged off.

“Anyone notice something about when Roll activated that hidden bit of code?” Yai stated, “Mayl went for her wrist, as if she expected to find something, and got _two_ microphones from the rack of them,”

“She’s had a watch strapped to her wrist since birth, Don’t know why she had a microphone though...” Lan offered, “Still, that was a wicked cool thing Roll did...”

“It’s called the Songbird Protocol, and it’s not strictly a ‘hidden’ bit of code. Completely untested in that format, but worked perfectly,” Roll stated, “The equivalent for a modern PET would need to be installed differently. The majority of the code is in the microphone. Sonnet did most of the coding...”

“So, what does the Songbird Protocol mean?” Mega Man asked, as Roll looked through something on the PET.

“Ah, here’s the alternative install process… Mayl, do you have a spare blank?” Roll asked, “And please, don’t slot it into your watch first,”

“Here it is...” Mayl said, getting two blanks out, one with the label crossed out, “Ruined a blank putting it in my watch. Doktor claims the data was ruined...”

She tossed it to Lan, Roll copying the data over onto the other chip. “Keep hold of both of them,” She stated as she handed him the newly coded chip.

“Right, Lan, slot this chip in, then use the chip you use for Cross Fusion,” Roll stated. Once Lan slotted the first chip in, his PET started playing a tune.

“_Mirai e to, __navi__ wo tore... Taemanai hikari de, Kotae sagashi tsuzukeyou..._” Mayl mumbled after a few seconds as she drummed her fingers to the music, before Lan slotted in the Cross Fusion chip.

“Performing Live… _**The Blue Bomber!!!**_ It’s Mega Man!” The PET announced, before one of the transmission nodes crackled, and Mega Man was suddenly in the classroom.

“Now slot in the chip again, with my Soul chip in backup...” Roll stated, the tune starting up again, this time the PET saying, “Backing Singer… Wind, Let Them Know! It’s Roll!”

“What does it mean by that intro?” Lan asked, for Mayl to slot the chip into Roll’s PET, for the same song as Roll cut off to play, Roll cancelling the chip process as she appeared, hitting her wrist to change to her casual look.

“With Mega Man, it’s a nickname he’s had since low baud days, The Blue Bomber. With me, The Bird Call, the unique identifier for me, is my song,” Roll stated, calling up the name of the song on Songbird. Lan then slotted the chip in, only to follow it up with the corrupted chip.

“Backing singer… In-In-In-Install Y-Y-Your H-H-H-Heart, S-S-Sonnnnnnnn….” The PET stammered, Megaman vanishing back into the internet as Roll helped him through the process, Lan restarting his PET. Mayl slotted the chip into her watch, getting, of all things, the opening bars of Install Your Heart.

“Chip’s still working...” She stated, both her and Roll looking worried. They’d heard the attempted Bird Call. _Sonnet’s _Bird Call.

A few hours later, Lan put both chips in for Higsby to analyse.

“The chip identifies as, of all things, Sonnet Soul,” Higsby stated, replacing the damaged label, “For a flawed blank, as your friend claims it to be, it’s also worth millions to the right person...”

“So, if Sonnet was to return, this would allow her to be summoned to someone else’s PET?” Yai asked.

“The identifier flags are unmistakeable. The only reason Lan’s PET crashed is that the handshake on Sonnet’s end of the signal failed...” Higsby stated, putting a label of a microphone on the Songbird Protocol chip, “I’ll be making copies of this chip, for you and your friends. Mayl won’t need one, Roll already has the data...”

They each tested the chip, doing a trivia session over which ones of them recognised the tune that played. Dex then asked an odd question. “Did any of you notice what song Mayl’s watch played?”

“She played Install Your H...” Lan began, “Sonnet’s Bird Call, which is meant to be unique, is Install Your Heart!”

“What’s Mayl doing with Sonnet’s data?!” Higsby asked, checking something about the Sonnet Soul chip, “Let me just test something...”

He called up a set of testing Mets, slotting the chip into the battle simulator. For a brief few seconds, they saw Sonnet appear on the left hand side of the screen, before the terminal reported a segmentation fault.

“This is the first time I’ve seen almost non-corrupted data for that Navi...” Higsby stated, “I need to talk with Mayl, ask her why she has clean data for a ghost on her PET...”

In their next class, Roll pinged Mayl.

“Mayl, Can you test something for me? Try to twist the bezel of your watch...” She asked, Mayl nodding, the entire middle of the watch coming away, “Now, Hand it Lan...”

Mayl almost dropped it as her hand began shaking, Lan finding a socket on the side, which he slotted into his PET, Roll arriving shortly after Mayl’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed.

“Her heart’s stopped!” Ms. Mari stated.

“Don’t do anything!” Roll snapped, “This is important, Do not attempt to revive her!”

She then headed into Lan’s PET, calling up the microphone and engaging her other appearance, oddly holding a second microphone. When they arrived in the PET’s data buffer, they found a sleeping Mayl, Roll pulling up her sleeve and detaching something, before slamming it into the other microphone, before stating, “OUT!”

“Backing Singer… Install Your Heart, So-” They heard as they left.

In the physical world, Mayl snapped awake, somehow summoning one of the music studio’s microphone, a wire unspooling from the side, plugging into the nearest port, as she grabbed the bezel from beside her, placing it face-down.

“Performing Live!” She snapped, slamming the microphone into it, for everyone to gasp as they saw Mayl put the microphone to her lips, and state, “_**Install Your Heart! **__**Sonnet!**__”_

“What the hell?” Ms. Mari stated, “Did it just...”

“Backing Singer!” Mayl declared, Roll’s voice declaring ‘_**Wind, Let Them Know!**__**Roll!**_’ before the port crackled as Roll found herself stumbling on the classroom floor, Mayl handing her a bag, which she looked inside, the wire snapping back into the microphone.

“What the hell is going on?” Lan asked, “Did she just...”

“Not how the Protocol is meant to work...” Mayl stated, “But the protocols get revised all the time… Now, where was I? Oh yes, The phantoms… Now, When Roll enabled my protocol, she activated the node _correctly_...”

“Are you still Mayl Sakurai?” Roll asked, “Well, you just basically handed me my lunch from over a decade ago… Still fresh too… Didn’t lose a single byte. Either kind.”

“As you said, Mayl Sakurai was stillborn,” She replied, “And consider it was in the frozen part of my code...”

“Ah,” Roll stated, taking Mayl’s seat, and, after considering it for a moment, tossed Lan Mayl’s PET, “Neither of us need it.”

“OK, Now we’re back in one piece… I was delivering Roll’s lunch, and encountered an attempt to assassinate Fortesimmo and his sister, because he was being his usual rebellious self,” Sonnet/Mayl stated, “Fortesimmo was frozen in that node, I was halfway through transferring out, his sister had evacuated already...”

“Fortesimmo? I don’t know of a program named that...” Ms. Mari stated.

“You might know the clone compiled from his data fragments...” Sonnet offered, smiling sweetly as she called up an image, “_Bass._”

“Wait, Wait, Wait, _Bass_, as in...” Roll stated.

“My old boyfriend, the one that, if we went steady, you’d become a singing applet over?” Sonnet stated.

“No wonder the node crashed...” Roll stated, “Wily went all out to stop him...”

“You knew Bass when you were younger?!” Lan stated, “Next you’ll be saying...”

“Fortesimmo is a sweet young man,” Sonnet snapped, “And yes, we were dating!”

“Real sweet...” Megaman droned, “He’s a berserker. He tries to kill me whenever we meet...”

“Paging Bass...” Sonnet stated, as she tapped her Protocol.

“Who is it? Oh, The pink girl’s operator...” Bass growled from her watch.

“Check my IP.” Sonnet snapped, for him to look annoyed for a moment, before looking very confused.

“Error. Protocol Offline. Does Not Compute. Error. Does Not...” Bass began, for them to hear the sound of a buster powering up, then the same voice stated, “Hello, gorgeous… Thanks for the restart,”

“Excuse me for a moment...” Sonnet stated, smashing her protocol into the microphone again, before plugging it into the school display.

“You will not defeat...” A familiar voice croaked before the much less angry looking replica of him shot him again, as they found themselves looking at what was most likely the original.

“OK, My name’s Fortesimmo Wily. You might know me from...” Forte stated, before turning the image to show the slowly reforming Bass, “...meeting my bugfrags, Literally...”

“So, you’re the original program Bass was compiled from...” Lan stated, “Mind the fact me and… umm, Sonnet were dating while she was Mayl Sakurai?”

“I prefer Sonnet Sakurai nowadays, Lan...” Sonnet offered, “We’ll keep Mayl as a middle name,”

“She wasn’t quite herself, so I won’t come decompile your Navi and shove my buster up your...” Forte began.

“FORTE! Language!” Sonnet snapped, for them to see the unique sight of a sheepish Bass.

“Sorry. Might drop by the Overnet when I’ve finished dealing with my idiot relative… Now, Bass, Who is the immortal, invincible son of the great Herr Doktor Wily?” Forte growled.

“Wait, Did he say ‘Herr Doktor’?” Mayl hissed to Roll, “What else do we know with the name ‘Herr Doktor’?”

“I’ll go check her protocol...” Roll replied, vanishing.

“I am...” Bass growled, before Sonnet disconnected, as there was the sound of heavy buster fire from her Protocol, then it went silent.

“I apologize for that.” Sonnet stated, “But as you can see, outside of a few temper issues, he is not as bad as he seems...”

“He spent the entire conversation demeaning Bass,” Lan pointed out.

“And what did you mean by ‘check my IP’?” Megaman asked.

“It’s similar to an archaic term ‘check my phone number’, before people started using e-communication all the time… Bass was confused by the fact my Protocol was offlined,” Sonnet stated, before tossing her Protocol at Lan, all of them noticing she didn’t even look winded this time, “You should find another me in the Protocol. Exchange access details with her. You could say she’s Sonnet while I’m Mayl… She’s basically my Navi. Roll has something similar on her Protocol.”

“When you noticed me change form when that Met appeared in Songbird, I was switching between me… and well, myself...” Roll stated as she reappeared, “Mayl can now do the same thing,”

“Excuse me for a moment...” Sonnet stated, pulling the wire on her wrist out and plugging it into Mari’s desk, her foot tapping for a few minutes, then she unplugged it, “Corrected my school records, Also exterminated some Mets which were attempting to get in to offline me again...”

Doctor Wily frowned as he looked at the video file downloaded when the attack group went to track why the node he’d trapped Bass’s better half… and his better half… in reactivated, to see what was unmistakably Mayl Sakurai walking in the school network, the fact she tapped her wrist and summoned some Cannon-1 chips telling him all he needed to know.

When he got back the decompiled code of Herr Doktor, he knew they were aware of _exactly_ who had attempted to decompile her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now you know _why_ Sonnet is not listed as an Original Character. She's been Mayl all along.


End file.
